at the developers

Currently I'm noticing, the forum is filling with balance complaints, balance suggestions, and complaints about some mechanics,
and with pages of analysis and diskussion (big deal of that by Zee and me).
But I rarely see the developers taking part in them.
Neither do I see fast action (except for the 235-lurker issue, which went really fast).
Therefor i'm just asking:
-> could u give replys, in those dicussions, telling u like directions of ideas or don't and giving hints where u'd like the map development to go?
-> do the forum threads take too much time? (might be understandable)
--> might it be helpful to make summed up threads, showing results of a discussion in 1 post?

best regards,
zuploed

I am reading a lot of the stuff everyone is writing. But it is impossible to read everything, reply to everything, work at the map, have some real life and study all together.

Having all that input is quite helpful, when you counter each other with arguments it makes it easier to think about all (or at least more than without) of the side effects of specific changes without spending too many hours on it myself.

Changing too many things too fast would destroy all the tactics you know and make this map/mod unplayable (you dont want to fiend new tactics every 2 days because your old one just got nerfed/ the counter got buffed). Slowly changing everything in the right direction and fixing bugs one by one (currently only in the new version) is better than rushing and having a huge chance of fucking everything up.

Or would you say this map/mod goes in the wrong direction?

Hmm thinking twice now i think my post has an inadequat tendency :/
Its not the first mod project i'm following, I should know better actually.

Arkless wrote:

and fixing bugs one by one (currently only in the new version)

the 1339?
if so, i understand partially.

Quote :

Or would you say this map/mod goes in the wrong direction?

maybe it doesnt quite match my personal preferrences,
but theres no need to spam them
or take them more important then those from other users i guess,
after all its ur map, not mine

zuPloed wrote:

Hmm thinking twice now i think my post has an inadequat tendency :/
Its not the first mod project i'm following, I should know better actually.

Arkless wrote:

and fixing bugs one by one (currently only in the new version)

the 1339?
if so, i understand partially.

Quote :

Or would you say this map/mod goes in the wrong direction?

maybe it doesnt quite match my personal preferrences,
but theres no need to spam them
or take them more important then those from other users i guess,
after all its ur map, not mine

well, I never gave it the name DS1339, but everyone seems to call it that (even Sylon >.>) so... yeah

I do not mind getting many suggestions, I welcome them. Just knowing what the community says helps a lot during development/balancing.

This forum seems to lack activity as of late...

I'm kind of getting embarassed seeing my name on all the topics. Still I'd like to discuss, as this mod is currently one of my time killer activities. As usual it gets really bad once you get good at it (kills the fun).

Quote :

Changing too many things too fast would destroy all the tactics you know and make this map/mod unplayable (you dont want to fiend new tactics every 2 days because your old one just got nerfed/ the counter got buffed). Slowly changing everything in the right direction and fixing bugs one by one (currently only in the new version) is better than rushing and having a huge chance of fucking everything up.

I have to disagree with this. I always like patches as they are an opportunity to try out something new. I got so bored of the old tactics that they begin to annoy me now (and I see others who are like me). The zerg race as a whole just annoys me now (playing versus them is fun - until broodlord ofc, as it is handicap mode for me, except zvz). I also find it refreshing to play in TvT where mech is semi-viable and not an outright suicide like in the other MUs (by that I mean biomech - pure mech is suicide anywhere).

Also, changing just a few things can also kill strategies. Like lurkers: they single handedly made the dying speedzerg strategy completely dead in zvz (it was still possible to hold for a while with lings, but now a quick T2 invalidates it all).
Sometimes it is not even your doing. Like the patches of Blizz, reducing toss upgrade costs, it made toss T3 quite a bit more powerful. Or the recent queen range increase, it actually made marauders harder to counter with Z. Not to mention the 5->6 range upgrade on Immortals, made them a real turret/PF buster (they were targeted first before, and so it was relatively safe to let them near turrets/pf, now they hide amongst stalkers and 3-4 of them can end the game right there).

Also, the things you are going to do with the new version will positively kill a lot of strategies. Formations will kill speedzerg now for good. Lower middle income will make mass quick bc unstoppable in TvT, and Mass Raven a lot more powerful (maybe Raven->BC will be the standard in TvT on low-mid income settings?)

Quote :

Or would you say this map/mod goes in the wrong direction?

No. The problem is that it is not heading in ANY direction. Like every week or two there's a new Star Battle or Marine Arena patch with major changes. This game has almost the same balance for years now. I can't even remember when was the last major change (not counting the lurker - it is more of a metagame evolution combined with the range bug fix than the effect of any changes). Honestly I have no idea how the game keeps up the popularity. The forum seems dead, the game has not changed in months, there are game breaking bugs everywhere (leaver starting money bug, turret reward bug, lurker hold bug, ability roaming bug, middle income bugs, storm aiming bug, pathing bug).

EDIT:
Ok, i'm being unfair here. For example Nexus wars is never updated and it's still on page1.
/EDIT

I know it is not easy. Look at my DS version I started a 1000 years ago. Where is it? Nowhere. I decided I pretty much rewrite a lot of major aspects of it, and I don't have time or motivation for that (Doom modding is 99999 times more rewarding than SC2 modding). IIRC you are a team of two, so your situation isn't exactly much better than mine, but at least you could have the motivation of having a high popularity status. Now I don't know if I should nerd rage or be sympathetic.

Quote :

I got so bored of the old tactics that they begin to annoy me now

I'm finding myself quite frequently trying bullshit right now, just for the lulz^^
(did u know one can win with getting only speelings? about 120 of them kill the pf by themselfes)
dont know why i play this map quite often...

Quote :

Lower middle income

urrg, is that confirmed, or are u talking about the optios system at the start?

but overall i would agree that this map could use some fresh air->
new units (i lost many words about that in the units sections)
balancechanges for the metagame
formations might turn out pretty nice.

I was talking about the pre-map setting. Actually, to think of it different settings might play really differently. For example generally low money settings will probably favor Protoss, since you cannot easily get critical mass to make zealots irrevelant.

You can also actually mass zealot the PF, once it is surrounded, it is dead. And there are a lot of ppl who cannot counter zealots/lings (somebody outright loled at me for suggesting reapers).

We are in fact working at it, we already posted some work in progress stuff (for ds 1339).
https://desert-strike-1338.forumieren.com/t207-ds1339-work-in-progress

At the moment it includes (but is not limited to):
- positioning your units
- adding stuff to a specific unit (not sure what exactly, at the moment you can just recude the movement speed)
- voting resources /defense stuff
- additional income bonuses

What has to be fixed till the release that is already known as bug (not limited to just that):
- gas not working as intended
- mid not working
- some units go out of range and stay there forever


I read everything you wrote, just dont have the time to reply to all of you and just picking favourites ... is not what i want.
As always, thank you for your devotion to this map

Arkless

Is the new version coming some day, or have you abandoned it?

With 1.5 my mods folder got deleted, so all my work is gone, but I could at least do bugfixes and balancing on this, which is badly needed at this point, as 1.5 broke a lot of things. So if you no longer want to update, i could manage the map... Even if I have to manage multiple different versions....